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Wednesday, 1 July 2015

Spencer Nero's Secret - The Lost Chapter

The 2015 PARAGON annual (still on sale here or FREE to download here!)
contains a prose Spencer Nero story revealing the Civil Centurion’s darkest
secret – he’s actually Scottish! Clearly,
this is a shameful state of affairs for such a bastion of civilised Englishness
(and murderous Romanosity), but it was always part of my plan for the
character. In fact, it’s even in the original pitch for the series I made to
PARAGON editor Dave Candlish, which is preserved for posterity at the back of
the Spencer Nero Compendium

However, what’s notso well-documented is the fact that ‘Spencer Nero’s Secret’ was
originally a chapter longer, and featured a fight with an ungodly Orcadian
stoor-worm. I cut this chapter, because I felt the story was going off on too
much of a tangent, and taking too long to get to a key conflict, but on reading
it again, there are bits I quite enjoy, so I thought I’d stick it up here as a
piece of Nero apocrpyha. One aspect of the lost chapter is alluded to in the
published story, but sadly, there was no room for the stoor worm. Enjoy.

[Afflicted with a spiritual virus which he’s keeping at bay
by wearing the Janus Mask, Spencer heads to Orkney, to fight the mythical beast
that’s infected him.]

Part Four: The Flying
Scotsman

Teddy Talbot had many unique qualities, but ‘tactful’ and ‘restrained’
were not amongst them. His blithe disregard for other people’s feelings or
personal comfort was made all the worse by his position as in-house pilot for
some of the more obscure civil service bodies, including the Department of
Collusion, the Department of Oversight, and the Department of Contingency. Not
only did Teddy frequently regale his passengers with the grisly details of what
might happen in the case of a catastrophic engine failure, he often had the
privilege of flying Spencer Nero to his latest destination, and would spend
most of the trip speculating cheerfully on ways the Civil Centurion might meet
his fate.When dropping him off over the
invisible Island of the Naztecs, for instance, he’d expressed his sincere wish
that Spencer wouldn’t drown. When taking him to the Alps to tackle the North
Face of the Eiger, he’d invited Spencer to consider the possible impact of
below-the-belt frostbite, and to decide in advance whether he’d “keep them in a
jar if they fell off from the cold.”

Thankfully, however, Teddy wasn’t even slightly Scottish,
which made it safe enough for him to transport Janus. It was a rather like delivering
a temperamental and highly explosive bomb to its target. As such, Teddy was sure
to treat his cargo with the care and respect it deserved.

“Crikey, you’ve got a shiny face, haven’t you?” he asked,
once the plane – a sleek and single-winged Percival Gull - had taken off. “Haven’t
you, though? You have, haven’t you? What do you polish that with then?”

“The skin of the
fallen,” replied Janus, who was seated directly behind Teddy, his
impossibly baritone voice redolent with menace.

“Oh, right. Do you ever use someone’s face to shine your
face?” asked Teddy. “That’d be funny, wouldn’t it? It’d be a bit like kissing
them, I suppose.”

Janus began to grind his teeth together, producing a noise
that sounded like tectonic plates shifting.

It was going to be a long flight.

They were headed for the northern cluster of islands which
comprised Orkney, near which the beast was known to lurk - a fact suggested by
folklore and confirmed by the tarot cards of Mr. Alabaster.

It is probable that Teddy avoided dismemberment only because
the idea of dismembering the Nuckalavee (a much more interesting creature,
anatomically speaking, with multiple limbs, torsos and heads, all ready to be
ripped off) proved more tantalising. It was, however, a close-run thing. A
stop-off for fuel in Aberdeen provided Janus with merciful respite, and when a
vast Stoor Worm erupted from the sea near the isle of Hoy and nearly plucked
the plane from the sky, it came as a particularly welcome distraction.

The Worm was a horrid, segmented, rubbery thing. It was almost
as tall as the Big Ben clock tower, though not nearly as thick, dripping with
brine and tipped with a monstrous gnashing maw. Its black, oily skin was
covered with projecting jelly-like fronds, which flapped unpleasantly as the
creature spiralled and writhed, lunging at the plane.

“Blimey – does that thing work for the Knuckle bloke you’re
after?” asked Teddy, veering the Percival Gull sharply away from the snapping
worm. “Or did it just wake up on the wrong side of the reef?”

“Num importatis,”
stated Janus flatly, and began to open the plane’s canopy.

“If you say so,” replied Teddy. “This is the bit where you
hop out and I clear off, right?”

“Rectus.”

“Well, chances are you’ll get eaten or crushed - or you
might just expire from that plague of yours first - but I’ll keep my fingers
crossed for you anyway,” Teddy told Janus, as the latter scrambled out, digging
his fingers into the very metal of the fuselage itself to maintain his
position. “Won’t put any money on you surviving, of course – I mean, I’m not that stupid – but stranger things have
happened. Cheerio!”

And with a profound and all-consuming sense of relief, Janus
leapt from the plane and straight into the Stoor Worm’s mouth. As its warm, wet
gullet enveloped him, and its many rows of teeth began to tear into his flesh,
one thought resonated above all others in Janus’s mind.

His day was finally
starting to get better.

Part Five: The Rammy

At the foot of the merciless cliffs of Hoy, from which Jock
Numinous had plunged the previous night, an odd vessel eventually floated to
shore. Someone well-versed in both folk and nautical lore might have suggested it
looked like an impromptu dinghy, constructed from the insides of a Stoor Worm and
using its uvula as a sail, but no such person bore witness.

Janus emerged from the fleshboat and clambered onto land.
His skin was cut, his clothes were torn, and he was covered in a thin,
semi-transparent layer of pharyngeal mucus, but if anything, there was a spring
in his step. Swiftly, he traversed the rocks and began gathering up flat blades
of mustard-coloured seaweed, heaping them together in a pile...

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About Me

I write things. Strange things, mind: comics and otherwise. At present, I have contributed to Doctor WTF?!, Dogbreath, Paragon, Temple APA, Disconnected, The Psychedelic Journal of Time Travel and Massacre For Boys Picture Library. I have also published my own 52-page graphic novel, 'Martillo'.